


so kiss me (and i'll kiss you too)

by girltalk



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: (seriously so much pining), Canon Compliant, M/M, Pining, Trapped In Elevator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 16:39:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7648522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girltalk/pseuds/girltalk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Soonyoung matters to him and that's all there is to it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	so kiss me (and i'll kiss you too)

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to a for the title ♥

In Seokmin’s head there are two versions of Soonyoung.

The first version of Soonyoung needs no elaboration. It’s the one that pulls you up from the ground and dusts off your jeans, and then runs half a mile ahead of you while you struggle to keep up. The second version of Soonyoung is a little trickier to grasp—so much so that Seokmin isn’t entirely sure it’s not an optical illusion. Tilt your head to the side, stare at Soonyoung without blinking, and eventually you’ll see the faint ridges of an exoskeleton that keeps Soonyoung 1.0 together. 

In comparison, there’s only one version of Seokmin, he’s as straightforward as a children's book. And that version of Seokmin absolutely, emphatically, does not want to be trapped alone in an elevator with either version of Soonyoung right now. Which is why his current predicament feels like a dream—it’s such a specifically excruciating scenario, only Seokmin’s subconscious could have possibly come up with it. But he knows it’s real, because Seokmin hasn’t slept since 5AM today, and it’s not possible to feel sleep deprived in a dream is it?

“We’re idols,” Soonyoung says humorlessly, looking up at the defunct elevator lights above them. “We can be sleep deprived anywhere.”

 

 

Most problems that emerge between Seokmin and Soonyoung are easily solved. 

After all, the most common cause is Seokmin’s tendency to live as an unwitting domestic pirate, accidentally losing the members’ belongings in the most out-of-the-way places in the dorm. There is no map, and there is no treasure chest, there’s just a lot of yelling and clothes flying in every direction. Seokmin borrows Soonyoung’s hat and the next day it’s lost at sea, never to be seen again. Until one night, two months later, when the strange stench emanating from their fridge becomes potentially lethal, and the next thing Seokmin knows is Mingyu using a white Lonsdale snapback to carry the rotten pickled radish into the bin. 

“I must have chucked it in there with the milk,” Seokmin says. Soonyoung still looks peeved, and Seokmin wishes he could give him a better answer, but how Soonyoung’s snapback ended up squished behind a packet of sliced cheese is just as much of a mystery to him. 

But to make it up to Soonyoung, on his next free day Seokmin goes on an impromptu trip to Hongdae and buys another snapback, this time in black. He presents it to Soonyoung wearing a proud grin, one that fades when Soonyoung squints at it and starts snickering.

Seokmin’s gaze drops down to the hat and embarrassment pinches his gut when he notices it. “ _Longsdale_ ,” he reads carefully, and Soonyoung falls back onto his bed, holding his stomach. 

It explains a lot. Like why Seokmin had managed to get it at what he thought was a bargain price, and why there was a tiger embossed over the logo instead of a lion (when he purchased it, he thought it was cute, suitable for _Hoshi_ ). It doesn’t take him long to stop feeling bad though, because Soonyoung is laughing so hard he can barely take a long enough breath to call Seokmin an idiot. And Seokmin decides that hey, he is an idiot, and that it really is quite funny. 

Him and Soonyoung create a game between themselves. Whenever a member appears wearing a brand item, to humble them they try and think of a funny name for a knock-off. Jihoon walks into the dorm one day wearing a jacket by ‘DAKS London’. It’s low hanging fruit, and Jisoo buries his head into his arms when Soonyoung and Seokmin almost fall to the floor with how fast they are to yell _”DICKS!”_. Seungcheol laughs, but one sharp look from Jihoon and he bans the game forever. 

They still play it in private, but Soonyoung ends up losing the Longsdale cap. 

 

 

“I texted Jihoon and he told the manager,” Soonyoung says. He’s sitting a little away from Seokmin, but close enough for the text shining from his phone to be readable. 

”Thank you for this early birthday present,” Seokmin reads. He tries to find it in himself to be indignant, but since the only thing stopping him and Soonyoung from reaching full throttle annoying is their own self-awareness, he comes up blank. 

“I mean, I _assume_ he’s going to tell the manager. He isn’t going to leave us here overnight.” Suddenly, Soonyoung frowns. “Wait, he wouldn’t right?”

“Would you?” Seokmin asks. 

Soonyoung gives Seokmin a sleazy smile. “With you baby I’d spend several nights—” he cuts himself off, a rapid succession of blinks letting Seokmin know that he just remembered that it wasn’t okay to do that anymore. 

It shouldn’t, but it makes Seokmin sulk, because Soonyoung might have slipped up, but Seokmin hasn’t been able to stop thinking about it. And he feels like the obstacle, the stubborn rock that’s keeping both of them tethered to this limbo. If he had just gotten over himself earlier, then this would have never happened. Because between the two of them, Soonyoung is probably the more volatile one, but he’s also rational, has sense, knows how to separate what matters from what doesn’t. 

Seokmin on the other hand, likes keeping things simple. Soonyoung matters to him and that’s all there is to it. 

 

 

Objectively, Seokmin knows there are bigger problems in this world than harbouring a crush on your teammate slash coworker slash possible best friend. There are more pertinent issues for him to focus on—like that whole deal with climate change, something that Jeonghan is selectively passionate about whenever the temperature starts inching slightly above average. When the Antarctic ice caps are melting, does it really matter that Soonyoung raising his thumb to sleepily wipe a smear of toothpaste from the corner of Seokmin’s lips makes his entire face burn? Definitely not. Not when the heat emanating off his face afterwards is only contributing to global warming if anything. Lee Seokmin is an environmental disaster as well as a human one. 

But, the crux of the issue isn’t that Seokmin has a crush on his teammate slash coworker slash the world’s best friend—all things that are notably problematic on their own. It’s that he has a crush on _Soonyoung_.

“If you could only bring three things with you on a deserted island, what would they be?” Seokmin asks him after practice. 

Soonyoung squats down next to him, swiping a hand through his sweaty hair. It falls down over his face like a mop, covering his eyes, but Seokmin can still see the dark circles that have made a home in Soonyoung’s pale skin. “Good thinking,” Soonyoung says. “We should brush up on our interview answers.”

Seokmin punches him on the shoulder lightly. “I’m asking it genuinely!”

“That’s no fun,” Soonyoung says, wrinkling his nose. “A cell phone, lighter—”

“Think bigger hyung.” Seokmin spreads out his fingers and places them on Soonyoung’s head, squeezing firmly like he can physically force the answers he wants to hear on him. In reality, he just gathers the grease from Soonyoung’s hair under his nails. 

Soonyoung reaches up and twists Seokmin’s fingers with his own, laying their hands down on the floor between them. “Fine. I’d bring my laptop, my phone, and a video camera.” 

Seokmin laughs. “A video camera?”

“Yeah!” Soonyoung makes two L’s with his hands, bringing them out in front of his face to form a rectangle. “I’ll record a video diary. Maybe they’ll make a movie out of it once I’m found, like the one James Franco was in. Not to mention I’d go stir crazy if I had no one to talk to all day.”

 _’Then bring me with you,’_ Seokmin thinks. “How do you know they’ll even find you?” he asks instead. 

Soonyoung shoots him a smile. It’s one that makes him look like a child, reminding Seokmin of all the years they never had together. “Hey,” he says in exaggerated offence, “are you saying you wouldn’t search the whole world to find me?” 

 

 

If Seokmin had known beforehand that he’d be stuck in an elevator with Kwon Soonyoung in the late hours of the night, he would’ve at least thought to charge his phone beforehand. Alas, it had died half an hour ago, no thanks to Soonyoung using it as a hotspot all day since his own phone had ran out of data, and now Seokmin’s stuck eyeing the ceiling as his only source of entertainment. 

It’s a big elevator—can fit all thirteen of them depending on who’s on what diet—but sitting on the opposite wall from Soonyoung would feel too blatant. So instead Seokmin keeps a small but respectable distance between them, like two acquaintances waiting at a bus stop. He can see Soonyoung biting his nails, and his eyes have adjusted to the darkness enough that he can also make out the furrow of Soonyoung’s eyebrows. Neither of them are in the habit of letting unsaid things stew, but unsaid things don’t typically extend beyond the _”I know you’re the one stealing my underwear”_ range. And so they sit in silence, Seokmin pulling on the strings of his sweater so the hoodie shrinks around his face. 

“Are you cold?” Soonyoung asks. After his faux-pass earlier he’s been strictly speaking in questions, and when Seokmin answers he just nods and goes back to not talking. For a second Seokmin considers not saying anything, but then feels ashamed of his own petulance and mumbles out a _’No’_. 

Soonyoung accepts this answer without pushing. He slouches lower against the wall, hand resting on his abdomen, and not for the first time in his life Seokmin wishes he knew what he was thinking. 

 

 

In those rare moments that seem to be occurring more frequently as of late, when Seokmin just wants to retreat into his own head, he likes to daydream about a life where he had more of a backbone.

 _“I really like you,”_ hypothetical Seokmin would confess. Soonyoung would bounce the basketball in his hands (they’re always in the middle of playing basketball in these scenarios, he isn’t sure why), dribbling it in time with Seokmin’s heartbeat as he replies, _”Everyone likes me.”_

 _”I like you more than everyone else,”_ would be on the tip of Seokmin’s tongue, but even in his imagination he’s never brave enough to say it. He watches instead, as Soonyoung does some kind of intricate move he’d _never_ be able to pull off in real life, and twists his body to shoot the ball right through the hoop. 

Inevitably it comes to a point where keeping it in his head, giving it no breathing room, starts to feel overwhelming. He’s never internalised this much before, and he needs to tell someone before he explodes. He won’t get the fluttery, indulgent feeling that comes with commiserating with friends over a crush. He won’t get elbows nudging his ribs whenever Soonyoung enters a room, not like how his friends would discretely giggle in class when Yuju would walk by Seokmin’s desk on the way to her own. But he’s an extroverted person, a bubbling fountain of dirty water, and he _needs_ to tell someone. 

Jihoon isn’t the most conventional choice, especially considering the one Seokmin would usually go to is Soonyoung—but of course he can’t do that now. Jihoon and Soonyoung are two people who live on opposite ends of essentially every spectrum to exist, but maybe that’s why Seokmin approaches him. He could tell Seungkwan, or even Jeonghan, but Jihoon’s practical and level-headed. And most importantly, Seokmin knows he won’t pressure him to do anything. 

“Hyung,” Seokmin begins. They’re sitting in Jihoon’s studio, and Jihoon hasn’t started making passive-aggressive jabs implying he wants Seokmin to leave, so he figures now’s a better time than any. 

“Yeah?” Jihoon says, tugging his headphones down. 

“Hypothetically… what would you do if you had a crush on a bandmate.” 

Jihoon freezes. He turns to Seokmin slowly; there’s alarm on his face, but it doesn’t seem to be aimed towards anyone in particular. “I would talk to a therapist,” he says, making sure to enunciate every syllable. 

“You already went to a therapist,” Seokmin dismisses. “They said there’s nothing you can do, this is you now.”

“No.” Jihoon shakes his head. “I don’t accept that.” 

“ _Hyung_ ,” Seokmin laughs. “But really.”

Jihoon must catch something in Seokmin’s tone, because his expression softens, only his mouth remains pursed like it’s tasted something sour. “I mean… It’d depend on who it was, in your case—” and Seokmin doesn’t miss the fact that Jihoon doesn’t ask who it is—”I would…” Jihoon breathes out through his nose. “I really don’t know, Seokmin.”

Seokmin’s shoulders slump, but he smiles anyway. He appreciates Jihoon fighting against his own instincts, which are probably telling him that death is a preferable alternative to this conversation. “It’s okay,” he says. “I guess there’s really no clear answer is there.” 

“No there’s not, but honestly… Just try not to get too hung up on it.” Jihoon scratches the back of his neck, no longer able to mask his discomfort. “Seungcheol-hyung used to have a crush on this trainee, and when he found out she was quitting and moving back to Mokpo, he sort of just… refocused his affections on someone else.” He shrugs. “Sorry, all I can provide is third party anecdotal evidence. I mean, maybe deep inside Seungcheol’s vowed to never love again, but he seems to be doing okay regardless.” 

_Refocus affections._ Seokmin considers this information, rolls it around in his head to feel it out. “Yeah… that makes sense. Thanks hyung.”

“No problem,” Jihoon says, turning back to his computer. “But really, if I had a crush on one of you guys I’d throw myself off a cliff.” 

 

 

“Hey,” Soonyoung says, “didn’t you have a thing for that guy from NCT?”

Seokmin groans, hiding his face in his arms. _’Guy from NCT’_ , like Soonyoung didn’t always coo _’Oh Seokmiiiiin’_ every time Jaehyun appeared on a television screen. Like they weren’t talking about him just an hour ago. 

“If you want the elevator to plummet and kill me then just say so,” Seokmin says. He chances a peek at Soonyoung and manages to catch the tail end of a faltering smirk. “I just thought he was good looking, it wasn’t a big deal.”

It’s a flagrant lie, _everything’s_ a big deal to Seokmin. He doesn’t really know Jaehyun that well outside of memorising the arch of his back when they’d bow to each other at music shows, but the small constrictions of his chest triggered by Jaehyun smiling at him sure didn’t feel trivial. 

Soonyoung looks at him skeptically, the white of his eyes sharp as a knife. “You know, liking too many people is the same as not liking anyone at all.”

Seokmin’s head snaps up. “What?” He winces at the loudness of his own voice. “I don’t like _too many_ people.” 

Soonyoung brings a hand up and fans his fingers out, like he’s ready to start count—it’s got to be posturing on his part, Seokmin’s sure he wouldn’t be able to get past three. Probably. 

Still, he doesn’t really feel up to being proven wrong. “That’s different,” Seokmin defends. “Having a crush on someone isn’t the same thing as…” he trails off. _As what?_ Mortification is oozing from the crown of Seokmin’s head to the tips of his pins-and-needles ridden toes, and he really hopes Soonyoung doesn’t expect any sort of elaboration from him in this state. 

Thankfully, in the midst of Seokmin’s awkwardness, Soonyoung has lost his previous hardness. “I get it,” he says gently, mercifully. And then goes back to not speaking. 

 

 

Refocusing his affections comes so easily that Seokmin is sort of embarrassed. 

It’s not a surprise though, Seokmin has always been weak for good looking people. Not handsome the way Mingyu is, filled with charm and the approachability of a boy-next-door, but so good looking that Seokmin can’t believe he’s overlapped lifetimes with them. Soonyoung doesn’t understand him, his lips curling up slightly when Seokmin tries to articulate the logic behind it.

“You’re shallow,” is all Soonyoung concludes. 

“Noooooo,” Seokmin protests. “It’s like, you know how people like star gazing?”

“You’re comparing Jaehyun to a _star_ ,” Soonyoung says, eyes widening in disbelief. 

“No!” he slaps a hand over Soonyoung’s mouth when it looks like he’s about to yell something to the entire waiting room. Seokmin isn’t sure what it would be, but he has no doubt that it would’ve been awful. “No, it’s not that. I don’t know how to explain it, it’s just that… There’s beauty in things you can’t have?” 

This answer doesn’t sit any better with Soonyoung, and he alternates between mocking and judgemental for a few days until he discovers that it’s more fun to fluster Seokmin, make him so red that he can do little more than cry like a dying whale. After that it’s Soonyoung changing the icon of their group chat to a picture of Jaehyun, as well as lecherous eyebrow wiggling when NCT walks past them during the ending ment for Inkigayo, causing the butterflies tickling Seokmin’s stomach to go haywire for fifty different reasons at once.

Maybe “refocusing affections” isn’t the best term. Maybe the more accurate description is fixating on a distraction. It’s a nice feeling, thinking somebody is cute. It makes the exhausting schedules easier; serves as a good pick me up when they’re on their third rehearsal for M!Countdown and spotting Jaehyun standing behind the camera makes everything in his body just ache less. 

But, it’s separate from the feeling he gets when they’re monitoring one of NCT’s live performances, and Soonyoung smiles at him like it’s another one of their inside jokes. 

“Okay, say you like someone,” Seokmin blurts out, walking into Jihoon’s studio.

Jihoon sighs. “Oh boy.”

“But, you think you might mostly like them because you like the way another person you like likes the way you like them,” Seokmin says in a rush of breath. “Is it dishonest to tell yourself you do like the person you like even when the reasons for the liking them are sort of messed up?”

Jihoon blinks lazily, letting Seokmin wait for a few long seconds before dignifying him with an answer. 

“This time I’m one hundred percent serious when I say you need to talk to a therapist.” 

 

 

Something tickles Seokmin’s upper lip. He sniffs and tries to swat the intrusion away, but gets his hand captured in a tight grip. He pries his eyes open, briefly panicking when all he can see are metal walls looming over him. That’s until his cognition catches up with his senses and he remembers where he is. 

“Did I fall asleep?” he asks. He tries to push his hair back, but Soonyoung is still holding onto his hand. Seokmin creases his forehead, opens his mouth to ask what’s wrong, but stalls when he realises how close Soonyoung is to him. So close that if Seokmin straightened up to fix his posture, his nose would end up grazing along Soonyoung’s face. 

They make eye contact, and the full force of the Autumn night hits Seokmin then, a chill knocking through the knobs in his spine. There’s intent in how Soonyoung’s lifted himself up on one knee, like a sprinter’s crouch before a race. On your marks, ready set, _go_. 

“You only napped for ten minutes,” Soonyoung says. “Manager hyung called, he said they’re trying to get the emergency generator running.” 

Seokmin nods. Soonyoung isn’t moving from his position where he’s half leaning over him, which means Seokmin can’t move either. They’ve been in this elevator for more than thirty minutes, but it’s only now that Seokmin thinks he knows what people mean by trapped. 

 

 

Seokmin’s constructed two clear cut paths for himself. 

In the first one he lets go, comes to terms with the fact that there’s nothing to be gained by being in love with someone everyone else is a little bit in love with too. At the end of this road they’re both with other people, and Soonyoung will look up at the sky and confess breezily that _”You know, I kind of liked you when we were younger.”_ And Seokmin’s going to turn on his heels and start running back, feet pounding the ground until they’re covered with blisters, only to realise that even the speed of light isn’t fast enough to reverse time. 

In the second one, he tells Soonyoung and gets turned down. The illusion of a destination is destroyed, and so Seokmin wanders around until he’s lost. He tries to trace his footsteps but they’re washed away with the rain, and he stands there drenched, wishing he’d never moved from that fork in the road. 

Spelled out, it sounds lot more pathetic than it actually is. Not that it isn’t already significantly pathetic to begin with—Seokmin remaining stagnant, bound by the possibility of Soonyoung liking him back, but not carrying enough faith to do anything about it—but he only lets himself mope when he’s alone. When he’s with other people he manages to forget about it. And when he’s with Soonyoung he just—

Stares.

 

 

“Hey,” Soonyoung says. “Calm down.” 

“You calm down,” Seokmin retorts weakly. 

Soonyoung raises an eyebrow. “I am calm.”

“Well then we’re both calm.” 

“Feels like I’m doing yoga.” 

“You’re terrible at yoga,” Seokmin says. He doesn’t know this for sure, but him and Soonyoung had tried doing pilates together once and Soonyoung was awful at that, so it’s at least an educated guess. Soonyoung doesn’t disagree either, but this means it’s silent again, and Seokmin wishes they could go back to nonsense banter so they could argue themselves into somewhere familiar. 

“Do you believe in God?” Soonyoung asks after a while.

Seokmin groans. “Shut up.” 

“ _I do_ ,” Soonyoung says. 

“That’s nice.” 

“Seokmin,” Soonyoung tries again, this time deliberately using his _’Hyung’_ voice. It coerces Seokmin to cautiously raise his gaze, to confront the way Soonyoung is staring at him so considerately. 

Soonyoung brings a hand up to push Seokmin’s hoodie down and says, “Don’t run away.”

 

 

It’s not often that Seokmin manages to find himself alone with Soonyoung. Not because he’s avoiding him, but when you’re constantly moving in a herd of thirteen, isolation is a luxury of rarity. Talking in their own corner of the practice room, idle chatter against the back wall of a music show, that doesn’t count. What does count is Soonyoung dragging Seokmin by the wrist to the Pledis building at 12AM, asking him for help writing a song.

“You already choreograph and you want to start writing songs too?” Seokmin says, pulling Soonyoung’s notebook towards his side of the desk. “You want to go solo that badly Kwon Soonyoung?”

Soonyoung does, and everybody knows he does. It used to scare Seokmin as a trainee, the potency of Soonyoung’s individual ambition, but overtime he’s come to understand what Soonyoung always knew: that wanting the best for yourself doesn’t have to conflict with wanting the best for your team. Not that it stops the insecurity from ebbing and flowing, but at least Seokmin gets it now. 

“If I want more lines,” Soonyoung states plainly, “I have to write them myself. Just help me come up with something for the bridge.” 

Seokmin sings through the song a couple of times. He can feel Soonyoung watching him and tries to look unaffected. The tune is a little generic, but Seokmin can’t throw stones when the last song he tried to write ended up unintentionally plagiarising EXO’s “Wolf”. 

“I can’t think of anything,” Seokmin says, frowning at Soonyoung’s disappointed pout. 

“Sure you can. Let your heart sing, not your mouth. Think of Jaehyun.”

Seokmin chokes on his spit and Soonyoung grins wickedly. 

“Now I just have _’Open your eyes’_ in my head,” Seokmin says. “Bam! You’re in a lawsuit. Kwon Soonyoung’s songwriting career over before it could even begin.” 

Soonyoung grabs a pen, holding it to his mouth as a mic. “Now we go to bandmate Woozi for an exclusive interview.” 

“I’ll pay anyone who wants to post bail double the money not to do it,” Seokmin says, in a great imitation of Jihoon if he does say so himself. 

Soonyoung laughs. “Who goes to jail for plagiarism? But fine, Jaehyun is a bust. I don’t know why I thought the fire burning in your loins might mean you have good ideas.”

“Nope,” Seokmin pops the ‘p’. “Just good dreams.” Soonyoung gags and slaps Seokmin’s shoulder. 

They go back to brainstorming, but somehow Seokmin finds himself flicking through Soonyoung’s notebook, biting his tongue as he takes in the pages of scribbled lyrics and music notes. “Who were you thinking about while writing these?” he asks, because he’s a masochist. 

“Ah, no one special,” Soonyoung admits. “Miyoung, do you remember her? She was in my class and I thought she was hot.” 

“Think about me instead,” Seokmin says. It’s meant to be a joke but he forgets to laugh at the end, and the sincerity ends up presenting itself so strongly that it’s almost heavy handed. He hears the aborted sound of a snort and resulting quiet coming from Soonyoung, and he can’t will himself to look away from the lined pages in front of him. 

Soonyoung presses himself flat against the table, all but shoving himself into Seokmin’s field of vision. “Have you written songs thinking about me?” he asks, and Seokmin guesses it’s also meant to be a joke, but Soonyoung’s mouth quivers, like he realised that he forgot to laugh at the end as well. And there’s just the question without any embellishments hovering in the air, waiting for Seokmin’s answer.

And the answer is no. There are no songs or melodies going through Seokmin’s head when he looks at Soonyoung. There’s a basketball rolling on an empty court, there’s a fork in the road, there’s seventeen year old Lee Seokmin meeting Kwon Soonyoung for the first time and thinking that he’s the most unattainable boy he’ll ever know—all things Seokmin’s never been able to put into words. 

Seokmin leans in, and Soonyoung must’ve been closer than he remembers, because there’s no time to prepare himself before he feels soft lips pressing against his own. He opens his mouth slightly, to take a breath, to make sure it’s real, and is instead met with blunt pain on his forehead when Soonyoung jerks upwards. 

Soonyoung’s clutching his head, expression twisted into an unattractive grimace. “Alright… that was… Not something I ever planned to do. Fuck. Ow.”

It’s like someone’s just grabbed Seokmin’s heart with an icy hand. He knew it would hurt, had mulled over all the ways the pain wasn’t worth it, but nothing could prepare him for the real thing, the putrid blend of humiliation and heartbreak making him feel physically sick. 

“Sorry…” Seokmin says, standing up from his chair. Soonyoung startles, staring up at Seokmin helplessly, and suddenly Seokmin feels guilty too. He apologises again through the knot in his throat, almost tripping over his own feet in his haste to run out of the room. 

He’s in the elevator, trying to regain his bearings, when a familiar arm barges itself through the closing doors and Soonyoung is clamouring inside with him. He looks frazzled himself, like he isn’t quite sure what his legs were doing bringing him here. 

“I’m sorry,” Seokmin repeats, stepping back. If he apologises enough maybe Soonyoung will let him be, think that Seokmin never really meant to do it and they can go back to the way they were. 

Soonyoung shakes his head. “Listen, you can’t just—”

The elevator lurches, cutting Soonyoung off and plunging them both into darkness. 

 

 

Soonyoung barely has to move forward, because despite Seokmin’s brain telling him it’s a bad idea, he almost sends them both sprawling backwards in his rush to meet Soonyoung for the kiss. There’s force behind it, not desperate but steady, both of them searching for some kind of assurance. 

Seokmin feels brave and wraps a hand around the back of Soonyoung’s neck. The entire elevator shudders when Soonyoung opens his mouth in response, and it’s like Seokmin’s entire body is shifting. He can see stars, phosphenes bright and blowing and—

Seokmin opens his eyes. 

He pushes Soonyoung away by the shoulders. It’s been less than an hour, but it feels like Seokmin’s finally seeing Soonyoung in light for the first time in years. His messy, pale blue hair; the acne scars on his chin; his ten past ten eyes that are still screwed shut. The fondness that fills Seokmin is enough to make his heart cave in on itself, and all he can say is, “The elevators moving.” 

“Huh?” Soonyoung blinks, flinching at the unforeseen brightness. He stands and offers a hand to Seokmin, who stumbles a little into Soonyoung’s side, legs cramped from sitting down for too long. They watch the floor numbers light up in descending order, stopping once it reaches the ground floor.

The doors open to reveal a concerned Seungcheol and a disgruntled Jihoon, who looks like he’s the one that had been trapped in the elevator. 

“Rescue mission completed,” Jihoon deadpans. His eyes dart between Soonyoung and Seokmin appraisingly. “Manager hyung is waiting outside. Now let’s all go back home and get some fucking sleep.” 

“Don’t mind him,” Seungcheol says, wrapping an arm around Seokmin and Soonyoung each. “He didn’t even have to come. He followed us out the door when we were leaving to get you.” 

Jihoon scoffs and rolls his eyes, quickly ducking his head and stalking out through the sliding doors of the building. Seungcheol shakes his head and walks forward. “The kids all wanted to come actually, I think they were hoping for something exciting to happen. What were you guys doing up there so late anyway?”

Soonyoung and Seokmin don’t look at each other. Instead, Seokmin feels fingers skate down his arm, and Soonyoung is clasping their hands together behind Seungcheol’s back. If Seungcheol notices he doesn’t say anything, and Seokmin is thankful for it, squeezing Soonyoung’s hand back with the strength of the words he can’t say.

“Nothing much,” Soonyoung answers. “Just making music.”

**Author's Note:**

> 1) i'm sorry for using jaehyun as a plot device, but 2) i just love the idea of seokmin in love T____T first time writing for seventeen, so sorry if anything is too erroneous ;;


End file.
